Tag Archives: Frack

Folks from Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance are proud to be on the ground fighting toxic extraction infrastructure with Ohioans, Appalachia Resist!, numerous other environmental and social justice groups. Keep updated by checking in to their website, and help get the word out by sharing this far and wide.

BREAKING: Ohio Residents Shut Down Fracking Waste Storage Facility

Update 10:40 a.m: Three anti-frack activists in handcuffs onsite.

UPDATE: 10:38 a.m.:

UPDATE: 10:35 a.m.:The front gate has been opened. Cops are chasing activists from the site.

UPDATE: 10:33 a.m.: Six police vehicles on scene. Workers have removed banners and police are ordering protesters to leave the property. Two of the activists remaining inside the facility have been detained by police. Others are standing in front of the main gate which has been locked by activists. One fire truck is now on the scene surveying the monopod. The vice president of Greenhunter is onsite meeting with the sheriffs and the police.

UPDATE: 10:20 a.m.:Activists unfurled a banner on one of the frack waste trucks reading: “No Frack Waste By Truck, No Frack Waste By Boat, No Greenhunter Waste Down Ohio’s Throat.” #DrSeuss

Matamoros, OH, 10:00 am. Good morning! Along with Earth First! and other environmental groups, we have stopped truck traffic at the Greenhunter fracking waste facility in Matamoros, Washington County, along the Ohio River.

Nate Ebert, a 33-year-old Athens County resident and member of Appalachia Resist!, ascended a 30 foot pole anchored to a brine truck in the process of unloading frack waste, preventing all trucks carrying frack waste from entering the site.

Over one hundred supporters gathered at the facility, protesting Greenhunter’s plans to increase capacity for toxic frack waste dumping in Ohio. Greenhunter is seeking approval from the Coast Guard to ship frack waste across the Ohio River via barge at a rate of up to half a million gallons per load. The Ohio River is a drinking source for more than 5 million people, including residents of Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. Test results from multiple frack waste samples reveal high levels of benzene, toluene, arsenic, barium, and radium, among other carcinogenic and radioactive chemicals.

“Our governor, legislature, and regulatory agencies have all failed in their obligation to protect Ohioans from the predatory gas industry,” said Ebert. “Greenhunter wants to use our water sources as dumping grounds for their toxic, radioactive waste. We are here to send a message that the people of Ohio and Appalachia will not sit idly by and watch our homes be turned into a sacrifice zone!”

“Fracking chemicals and cancer go hand in hand,” said Teresa Mills of the Buckeye Forest Council, a grassroots Ohio organization seeking a ban on frack waste injection. “Greenhunter plans to recklessly endanger the drinking water of millions of residents of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and beyond. How many kids have to get cancer before we decide that saturating Ohio’s rivers and aquifers with toxic waste is not worth it? We need a ban on injection wells to protect our air, our water, and our children.”

“I am here because the struggle against frack waste dumping in Ohio is the same as our resistance to the blasting of the mountains in my backyard in West Virginia,” said Kim Ellis of RAMPS. “Until we put a stop to poisonous and exploitative extractive practices everywhere, we will continue to fight.”

Keep fighting! Stand against fracking and injection wells! We don’t need to accept this abuse of our land, air, and water!

Follow us on Twitter: @AppalResist

###Appalachia Resist is a campaign of resistance to the poisoning and exploitation of Appalachia. For more information, go to:www.appalachiaresist.wordpress.com; Twitter: @AppalResist